Amongst the ferocious felines
by Darklooshkin
Summary: Surprise! Harry and Hermione become Cat People! Follow the dynamic duo as they... well... freak the hell out and try to deal with now being a totally different species. Challenge answer to Whitetigerwolf's polyjuice cat challenge.
1. Oops

**Disclaimer: if i'd written Harry Potter, I would have written it so that the Death Eaters actually _lost_ the first blood war. You see, after Voldemort disappears, the wealthiest Death Eaters turn around and claim Imperious, remember? And then get away with it, right?**

**Now ponder this:**

**Ten years later, who is amongst the chief advisors to the minister? **

**Who sits on the Hogwarts Board of Governors?**

**Who has such a stranglehold on the Slytherin families that his son, a blatant Gryffindor if ever there was one, manages to become the Prince of Slytherin despite a known Parseltongue being in the school at the exact same time? **

**Who commands so many votes in the Wizengamot that the opposition has to literally **_**raid his political supporter's houses**_** to defeat a bill legalising racial discrimination? **

**Lucius Malfoy, the winner of the first Blood war and very probably the one to almost win the second Blood War for Voldemort, is who. **

**If I'd written Harry Potter, I would have written it so that Voldemort's chief financial officer actually had something to gain out of Tommy-boy making a comeback. I would have written it so that the inner circle not in prison _wanted him back_. **

**They had the government, controlled business operations and had a stranglehold on the funding of law enforcement and education as a result. They'd won. Voldemort lost them everything they'd spent a decade and a half consolidating towards the very vision they'd rallied around Voldie-boy for. **

**If I'd written Harry Potter, they would have lost and actually had a reason to follow Voldemort after his resurrection. But JK Rowling wrote Harry Potter. I didn't, and never will. Nor do I own any licence dealing with Harry Potter or any works referenced, alluded to or highlighted herein. **

**And, when I look at how utterly non-sensical Voldemort acted, wasting his time playing mindgames with pensioners and teenagers rather than moving in for a swift, merciless kill, I am glad I didn't write him. For if that is, in fact, one of the brightest minds and most terrible menaces wizarding society ever faced, I would hate to see what would have happened if the magical world had come across, say, the Cray brothers...**

A/N: Yes, another response to one of Whitetigerwolf's challenges. This one deals with Harry and Hermione becoming Cat Boy and Cat Girl. They also happen to be the Adam and Eve for an entirely new species to boot, given that no catpeople exist in HP canon, at least not in my rusty memory. So they get to try and survive British Wizarding Society without being sold off or killed before graduation. Joy. Oh, and no bashing in this one, though Ron will be an idiot at times. Dumbledore's motivation is to actually protect Harry, he's just very bad at it. If you want a basis for what the two look like, Google Merle Vision of Escaflowne for a looksie. Like that, but slightly taller. Oh, and since they're predators, they will mature quicker than their peers, though not by much. By the time the Goblet of Fire rolls around, Harry will be at the same stage of development as the other 17 year olds he'll be competing against. They will also be smarter and a lot faster than humans, though they won't have the urge to hunt people unless they smell like a big, giant rat (hint, hint). Oh, and the Goblins will be sympathetic despite repeated attempts by the Goblins of talking the two into selling the runt of their litter to Gringotts to see if Catperson is edible or not. So the deck is even: Dumbles, Hogwarts and Gringotts on their side, wizarding Britain on the other.

It was strange, the things you tend to think about, waking up after being involved in an accident. The mind doesn't immediately focus on what happened, opting to perform what amounted to an instinct-driven self-diagnosis upon regaining conscience. Hands, Feet, Eyes, Ears and various other orifices and appendages, they all tingle or twitch, almost as if they're sending a signal to your brain saying 'Here, boss!'. For those that have experience with waking up like this, the routine becomes second nature to them after the third or fourth time their body goes through this process.

For those unfortunate souls, waking up injured sometimes meant waking up in a familiar area with little to no distractions available, knowing full well that they would be spending time recovering there. A daunting prospect, which people tend to remark upon when waking up in such a place. It's almost deliberate, some would say, the way everything seems to be geared to making your stay... _unpleasant_, as it were.

And if they say it loud enough, the nurse would turn to them and remark that why yes, the whole thing is _quite_ deliberate, thank you very much. The ulterior motive of making recovery unpleasant is, after all, to convince the injured that chancing an injury again would, ultimately, prove even more unpleasant. Thereby curing them of their need to inflict danger upon themselves. It all makes perfect sense in the mind of the nurse. Preventative medicine, she says it's called. Works wonders, she says.

Not that it's any help to those who seem chronically afflicted by bad luck and happenstance. Those few unfortunates whose fate it is to walk into an empty room and need a stretcher to get out. Those to whom walking is an exciting experience fraught with danger and mystery. Those unfortunate few to whom the mere act of breathing is somehow interpreted by fate as an invitation to cause mayhem in otherwise quite normal lives. Few, if any, of these unfortunates seek out danger. They only wish for peace, quiet and a nice big library in which to pass the time until the inevitable excitement comes about and attempts to kill them yet again.

It is quite frustrating. All that adventure, and all you want is to snuggle into a little corner of your room in your favourite chair, a cup of nice tea in one hand and a book in another. And others _admire_ you for your adventures. It's downright embarrassing. All that hero-worship / villainisation, all the fans, the fame, the money, all of it wasted on you. Not to mention that it plays hell with your schedule, having to fight for your life. It really puts a crimp on actually living, fighting for your life does. And others admire and envy you for it. Barmy, the lot of them. Maybe letting them deal with strange creatures wanting to devour you on a regular basis would change their minds. Though these are people that hero worship pre-teens without really questioning why. Barmy.

And then there are, of course, the inevitable little accidents that constitute the bread and butter of 'adventuring', or conditional suicide as it is known to the mental health professionals. The conditional part stems from your luck, where facing normally fatal situations merely results in one type of severe trauma or another. Getting hit by mysterious afflictions, pushed down stairs, losing control of your line segment aircraft whilst pulling a 3-gee turn twenty metres above the ground, being shot by the psycho who just murdered your parents, being starved by your relatives, having to kill one of your teachers because he had ascended to a whole new level of schizophrenia... They all leave their little marks, you know. No way are you going to sit through yet another detonation occurring less than twenty feet away from you and still emerge unscathed, oh no. Of course you wake up in the infirmary or the hospital again. And of course you discover that, to your dismay, there is no such thing as 'frequent bruiser' points that would allow you to bring in some form of distraction to be entertained by while you wait for your friends to turn up. It wouldn't be the sensible thing to do, after all. Heavens, they just might encourage the little blighters! Never mind those who never have a genuine choice in the matter!

So yes, these and many other tidbits constitute the thoughts of one of the infirmary's more troublesome patients. There is always a person who is so intimately acquainted with the local medical emergency facilities that their knowledge of trauma treatment equals that of a second year medical intern, who knows all the staff by name and can actually read medical files, jargon, admin papers and all without suffering from bouts of terminal confusion. They are the worst of patients, refusing to be cured of their seemingly boundless capacity for discovering new and exciting ways to earn themselves a trip to the trauma ward. They also grow up and make the best of doctors, if only due to their voluminous experience in medical treatments.

On the stuntman circuit, this used to be Evel Knievel. At Hogwarts, this description fits Harry Potter to a T. How else would you describe someone who jacks a flying car... and lands in the only tree that fights back? Or someone who encounters a Cerberus outside of Hades and/or Greece? Hades used to be the prison of the Greek Magical Republic before the Romans razed the place to the ground and is still the only country where Cerberi can be licensed as both pets & familiars. It's illegal for an individual to own a Cerberus anywhere else, given that a rare infectious disease has been known to jump from Cerberi to humans and cause men to get a magically induced period during the full moon.  
Yet somehow, Harry Potter managed to almost get eaten by one. And get clubbed by a troll. And fall off his broom, which was being jinxed by his schizophrenic defence professor at the time. He'd almost choked on that snitch too. And then he faced an undead... thing that was fast enough, strong enough and powerful enough to take down fully grown unicorns, a horse with a goddamn spike growing out of its forehead, a spike meant to kill the exact type of being that killed several unicorns _despite this_ . A thing that he'd faced because he had helped smuggle a baby dragon out of his school and got caught sneaking around after hours. And then he had, almost inevitably, ended up trying to prevent the theft of a stone that was literally a magnet to any dark wizard or witch worth his/her salt. By stealing it himself. And then burning his professor to death using his bare hands after said schizo tried to choke the life out of him.

He'd then woken up in the infirmary and was talked to in a mysterious manner by someone who should, by rights, be given a social services contact number and told to start applying for a pension instead of being put in charge of running a school. Sure, he was powerful, but he was just so... damn... _cryptic_. If that's how he taught his students, then it's a wonder anyone got through his class. And that had been the end of his first year at Hogwarts. And then the whole car crash thing happened. Oh well, only five and a half more years of this, and Harry could finally do magic outside of school. Then he could go and antagonise the Dursleys a bit. And go to Azkaban, which sounds like some fancypants Atlantean language or other for magic prison, for baiting muggles. He would probably get sent there for life if he said they'd been asking for it all along. Yippee.

He'd often wondered how long it would take him to get to know Madame Pomphrey well enough to have his own bed with a few decorations around it. He woke up to the sight of a potted plastic plant adorning the bedside table. This was both an encouraging and slightly worrying sign. On the one hand, it would probably only take him another few months' worth of 'schooling' before Poppy allowed him to keep a large book ready for himself. In the other hand, he would probably be granted this boon thanks to yet another horrendous and life-threatening episode in the sitcom that was his life.

He sighed tiredly, propped himself up and looked around what he could see of the hospital ward. As he was looking around, there was that recurrent nagging feeling that he was missing something important. He ignored it for now, waiting for his brain to give the 'all clear' when his appendages finished reporting in.

Several things stood out to him. One, there was frost on the windows, meaning that he hadn't been out long enough for the weather to change. Two, the part of the ward he found himself in was closed off from the rest for some odd reason. Three, the smell of disinfectant he'd come to associate with the infirmary was really heavy to day. Had someone else been sick recently? Not that this would be the first time that had happened during his post-womping Willow stay. He still remembered how Fred Weasley had invented and tried out a rainbow-belching soda, only to find that his addition of Iridescent vinewood shavings to get the orange coloured belch made the emission more... liquid. That had been an unpleasant yet hilarious half-hour to watch. Why, it almost made him forget about the professor he'd immolated the previous year or the carjacking he'd been an accessory to. And four... was weird. He could not only hear all the thousand and one things going on in the infirmary, he could feel the very vibrations that sound made as it travelled through the atmosphere. And then there was that odd discomfort he felt around where he knew his tailbone to be. Wait, _what's that?_ That soft and fuzzy feeling sure as hell didn't fit the description of any underpants he owned or knew about. There was also the matter of something... odd... running between his buttcheeks and down to his knees.

And that's when the nagging feeling finally resolved itself.

He had fully expected something to be in pain or missing when he'd woken up. He'd known what to look out for, thanks to Lockhart and his Amazing Bone-Vanishing Skills and the dozens of 'incidents' he'd been on the wrong end of in first year. Having your toe regrown because Neville used cauldrons whose shrapnel became sharper the farther away from the blast area it travelled meant that when you woke up in the infirmary and your body told you something, you _listened_. And what his brain was being told, it'd initially refused to believe because it was just ridiculous. There weren't less bits reporting in. There were _more_ bits reporting in than there should be. It was baffling. He was sure he didn't feel different. He was warmer than normal, yeah, but he was wearing pyjamas. Wait, was he? Poppy normally only supplied Pyjamas to people after they woke up and had a talk about what happened. When Harry normally woke up, it was to find himself wearing a hospital gown that was open at the back. He lifted the sheet. _What the fuck?_

He didn't remember being quite that hairy when he'd woken up in his own bed the last time.

His torso, legs and arms all seemed to be covered by a thick layer of... well... carpet. It was plush, soft to the touch, there was lots of it, but it smelled of damp socks. And the colour scheme left something to be desired. Black and brown stripes on a tan-coloured background? What did Malfoy do this time? Discover their little plan and switch his skin for the discards from a discount rug store? He wouldn't put it past the little ponce. Always up to something, the little bastard... Malfoy! That's how he'd gotten here. He, Ron and Hermione had brewed Polyjuice potion so that they could go and find out whether or not Draco was the Heir of Slytherin! Then what had happened? The last thing he remembered was putting on the right clothes and downing the potion. Then the taste of the potion. Then pain, unimaginable amounts of pain. And Darkness, of course.

He felt weird, is what he felt like right now. He couldn't see where his friends were, he refused to get out of bed to open the curtains and ask what was going on and he didn't think that an attempt at sleep would succeed at this point. He could, however, smell Hermione close by. He didn't know how he recognised her smell, but underneath another layer of that blasted damp sock smell lay the distinctive signature aroma he dimly recognised as belonging to his oldest female friend. She had to be real close for him to smell her, though. But he couldn't see her. What if she'd used the invisibility cloak to come and see him? How had she gotten it? And why hadn't she shown herself yet? Not that he really cared, he just needed to see a friendly face right now. Friendly faces were always more likely to actually tell him something useful.

"Hermione? Hermione, are you there?"

"H-harry? Is that you?" That was _not_ what he'd been expecting. From the location of her voice, she was two beds to his immediate left, a left blocked off by the curtain. So how exactly was he able to smell her as if she was in bed with him? Ultimately though, it mattered little to him. She sounded scared about something. Something told him he needed to find out what it was, and fast.

He got out of bed and promptly lost his balance. "Ow! Coming, Hermione. Wait a second..." Standing up, he realised that he'd fallen over because he now had a tail. His _tail_ had, apparently, tangled with the sheets, meaning that when he'd unconsciously pulled on it to get it loose, he'd overbalanced. He looked at it. It wasn't prehensile as such, so he couldn't just leave it sitting around his waist as he wandered, but it did adjust itself to stabilise him as he pushed himself off the ground. Shrugging, he pulled the curtain aside and laid eyes on the rest of the ward. At least he still had hands and feet.

He walked in on the hospital ward experiencing its midday rush. Both that Creevey kid and Justin were plonked onto beds close to the back, their creepy thousand yard stares and unmoving frames driving shivers up and down the spines of those that looked at them. The Creevey kid was being poked and prodded by a gaggle of mediwitches on loan from St. Mungo's, probably the most attention that kid would receive from the fairer sex for, like, ever. Mrs. Norris was currently adorning a window sill straddling the two beds, the beady eyes seeming to radiate malevolence even with the magical stasis some crazy piece of magic had imposed on her.

And Justin was covered in Hufflepuff graffiti. That just screamed desperate to Harry. It said 'We're the house of the loyal! Go and look at the ads we tattooed all across our helpless housemate's entire body as proof of our legendary loyalty!Ooh, and hard work! We do hard work too, except when it comes to finding the real culprit in a crime!'. Harry'd heard lots of claims about how the wizarding world's justice system made up for the drawbacks of its social state. However, he'd also heard that the 'puffs had more than their fair share of alumni working in said system.

And based on what he was seeing from the 'puffs, From Pomona Sprout down to the loneliest ickle Hufflepuff firstie... Needless to say, he would be retaining a lawyer or two in the near future. Making sure one was a Snake and the other a 'Claw. There was no way he was letting a 'puff determine whether or not he deserves freedom, ever. Especially not after seeing just how they treated house-mates that were at their mercy.

At least the Slytherins were consistent. If a snake hated you badly enough, soon every Snake was out to get you. If you got on well with them, you had powerful allies for life. And if you were a Snake and were threatened by something not related to the Dark Arts, they'd close ranks around you and swim through a river of blood for you. 'Puffs didn't know the first thing about loyalty and give it away easily.

It takes a Snake to appreciate, _truly_ appreciate, just what loyalty means and how precious it is. Slimy, yes. Snakelike (shudder), yes. Bad, sometimes. Evil? Nah. Well, maybe Malfoy, but that's it. They also played hardball when it came to earning that loyalty, often forcing issues others disagree with as 'proof of their commitment to Salazar's house'. And hard-won loyalty lasts so much longer than the kind the Gryffs or the 'Puffs had. Ravenclaws didn't care. Their definition of trust was that it was a standard measure of predictability in an entity you had dealings with. It was a probability measurement on how likely/unlikely a person was to fulfil certain obligations imposed upon them, given a set of tangible and intangible outcomes at the end of it. Unpredictable equalled untrustworthy to 'claws. No-one wanted to find out how a 'claw defined loyalty.

He'd gathered, from the one time he had asked, that it had to do with homoscedastic decision-making, where individuals would affect the decisions bias of others until their decisions reflected each other in statistically significant ways, with equal variance, equal biases and equal probabilities of choosing A over B, in the best-case scenario. When he'd asked for someone to clarify, he'd been told that loyalty had to be accounted for in the prisoner's dilemma, and that many 'claws were trying to fathom the decision theory behind loyalty so that they could account for it in their models.

They were just saying that loyal people would either make the same decisions as the friends they are loyal to or alter their decisions so that both themselves and their loyal friends/family benefit from the arrangement. When he'd asked about where the emotions were in this, the older 'claw had laughed at him and told him to stick with troll fighting for now. The headache he'd sported after that had had, thankfully, nothing to do with dearly departed Quirinus for once.

There were days he yearned for a re-sorting, where he could tell the Hat that he understood some of it now and that he would gladly go to Slytherin, thank you very much. They were in need of a good Seeker these days...

His eyes continued scanning the large room. The ward was empty for now. There was no doubt that the peace and quiet wouldn't last beyond the train approaching Hogsmeade for the spring semester. But now, now he, Hermione and the batallion of medical researchers poking and prodding unsuspecting petrification victims had the ward all to themselves. Which was just as well as Harry walked over to his bushy-haired friend and gasped. Hermione had turned into a cat girl. Her hair was a combination of bushy blonde and brown curls starting on the side of her neck and running downwards. He could tell that her face was covered in some kind of short, transparent fur while her facial structure was far sharper and more angular than it had been the last time he'd seen her. If it weren't for the expression of pure shock she was carrying, he would've said that she was recognisable, but now looked downright dangerous. Then again, the razor sharp teeth helped accentuate the look somewhat. Little teenager no longer, a carnivore was she. There was also the fact that her body had gotten a lot longer since their untimely arrival. He could see her legs extending beyond the bed when she fidgeted, to the point where she could probably touch the ground if she decided to bend her knee rather than lie straight. Come to think of it, he'd gotten a bit of a growth spurt as well... And her ears! They were long, and pointy!

"Harry! What happened to you?"


	2. Happy New Year!

**A/N: Penicillin is magical stuff, innit?**

**Disclaimer: Do I own Harry Potter? Do Wizards in the books possess that superpower we call common sense? The answer: no on both counts. Take a leaf out of the Dresden Files playbook, for chrissakes: plain sight works, especially when you actually wear modern-day clothing. Walking around in a dress with is a sure-fire way to attract the wrong kind of attention in the seedier parts of any city, after all. **

There were quite a number of times in Snape's life where he'd been flustered, a bit angry and very confused at the same time. Admittedly, he hadn't actually felt that way in over a decade now, but right now that didn't matter. One little talked about rule at Hogwarts in his time as a student was to never cross a Marauder. Once they marked you out as a target, they wouldn't relent until you were either destroyed or quite thoroughly humiliated in front of the entire school. Said rule was known under two names, the first being rule one. The second name for it was the Snivellus rule. That's what it had been called in the muggleborn's guide to Hogwarts. Three guesses as to how that name came about. No? All right, here's how:

It'd all started on the train to Hogwarts, where a boisterous James Potter had marched right up to Lily Evans and told her to come and sit down with people who would be real, powerful friends to her. Both Lily and Severus had hexed the bugger out of the compartment, upon which he'd hit the door with silencing spells and a _colloportus_. And that had been the start of the longest prank war in Hogwarts history. Seven years of classes, dodging pureblood fanatics in the dorm and marauding Gryffies in the corridor. Seven years of becoming intimately familiar with every magical trick in the book, every detection spell both the library and the restricted section had to offer, the counter to every single remotely activated potion, hex, jinx, conjuration, scourgifying charm (they only cleaned you to prepare you for what happened next), runic array and self-sufficient transfiguration he was likely and less than likely to encounter during his stay.

It was quite a respectable student's career, really. In between the Slytherin's machinations that typically precede the rise of a dark lord, he had managed to gain mastery level skills in curse breaking, the mind arts, charms, transfiguration, medical Healing, runes, Arithmancy, potions, herbology, Dark Arts, Defence Against the Dark Arts, Black Magic, Light Magic and Wizarding History. He'd managed to give as good as he got, protect Slytherin House from some of the more brazen and dangerous pranks the quartet had tried to pull and perform masterful retaliatory strikes when given the opportunity.

Potter got an invisibility cloak? Get Dumbledore to notice it. Marauders somehow apparating around the place? Why, reset the ward keys in such a way that the blame falls on them. Pettigrew running around, trying to hide the magical map that showed where every single human being in the castle was at any given point in time? Tell Filch about it, and set Peter up for the fall.

In the end, he'd accomplished what he'd set out to do. His oldest friend had been protected during her journey to becoming the brilliant witch she'd proven to be. None of the Slytherins approached her, at least not once he'd finished putting the fear of Snape into them. Not even the budding Death Eaters had dared cross that line with him.

It had cost him that friendship, in the end. But then, once she'd confessed her feelings regarding a certain messy-haired prat in fourth year, he'd known that she would never be happy if she was forced to choose between her wizard brother and the love of her life. So he sacrificed that friendship out of both necessity and circumstance, telling her about how his mother had instructed him to join the Death Eaters in the stead of Erasmus Prince, the head of the Prince family residing in the ancestral homestead outside of Berlin, which was true. And that, should they ever meet after Hogwarts, that he would probably end up having to kill her, which also happened to be true. But somehow he'd known, when he saw the look on her face upon seeing him publicly renounce her as a friend, that she could tell that that hadn't been the whole truth of the matter. Her sad smiles, in their final year, when she looked his way while snuggling up to Potter, had been enough to tell him that.

In the end, he'd bought her enough time to have a family, doting friends, a loving husband and a child before dying. Not bad for a soldier in a civil war he was supposed to fight as an enemy, huh? He'd kept her off the priority target list for long enough to make a difference in her life. And after she died, nothing else had really mattered in a long, long time.

He _chose_ to become a potions master, insane as the idea had been at the time. Curse breakers were a dime a dozen in Voldemort's ranks, as were warding experts and healers from all pure-blooded walks of life. What the Death Eaters needed was a potions Master, a human being skilled enough not to kill himself whilst brewing a lab cluster (five potions brewing in star formation around a central point, with the smallest mistake killing you and everyone else nearby). Potions masteries, unlike other disciplines, did not tend towards longevity. Mastery classes had survivors rather than graduates. The Potions Mastery Examinations Board convened in a building most people believed to be a fancy-looking fireworks factory, thick walls, foot-thick blast doors and very, _very _thin roof and all. Not to mention the fact that Potions Masters were the only known group of wizards to embrace muggle Hazmat training and procedures. And Voldemort had needed one for his ranks. That was the greatest benefit to Severus; becoming a Potions Master meant that it was extremely unlikely that anything bar Potions themselves would lead to his death.

He still remembered the fate of grandpa Avery, that one time the old bastard had hit him with a Dark curse while he was curing a batch of Demi-guise hide. Never mind that, having fought the Marauders to a standstill single-handedly for years meant that the curse had been countered and the retaliatory volley fired 1.5 seconds after Snape was hit. Never mind that he'd been about to cut himself to put some of his blood into the potion to finish up the curing process anyhow.

* * *

No, Lord Voldemort didn't accept that, didn't like that the one really valuable cog in his war machine had been attacked by a fellow fighter of lesser value to him in the middle of the Dark Lord's base. So he proceeded to demonstrate that, yes, even the _evanesco _and _scourgify _charms could be used to kill someone. Though the subject took a long and painful time to die, especially with Lord Voldemort deciding to vanish several inch-long pieces of skin first before s_courgifying_ the blood right out of the muscles. Too bad Severus hadn't had time to reconsider joining Albus's side by then, but hey. Being an accomplished mind artist had saved the proverbial bacon from being cut out of his hide, and it had kept him alive where everything else failed. Though he'd been sure he'd seen Peter's rat form scurry around the Dark Lord's private quarters. Severus never said anything, of course. It wouldn't do to interrupt the work of what he assumed to be Albus's backup spy in Riddleland. Albus still denied Peter's spy status to this day. Bless him, but he could be a funny old coot at times.

And now here he was, a decade and some change later, yearning for the good old days where he was expected to dodge rather than instruct Gryffindors and the hardest thing he had to face was a legilimency probe from one of the less inbred Voldemort fan boys. It was far less stressful than playing Darth Vader to the offspring of his best friend and schoolyard nemesis was turning out to be.

"They did WHAT?" Baffled. Flabbergasted. Confused. All things he could never really afford to be, or show to other people when he was. All things that his face was broadcasting, despite occlumency shield that could hold their own against the efforts of two of the strongest wizards alive today, even though only one had a body at this point in time.

Pomphrey was glaring at him _(me? Why me?)_ and Albus was roaring with laughter, his high backed chair rocking back and forth dangerously as he let loose a guffaw he probably had been holding in since the early days with Grindelwald. Not that he could begrudge the old man. It's not every day, after all, that two of your most annoying students made a completely accidental breakthrough in the history of potions and then changed species. One Harry James Potter and one Hermione Jane Granger had, after somehow brewing a perfect polyjuice potion in a dilapidated bathroom, managed to contaminate the perfect brew with faint traces of the _penicillium notatum_ mould, an addition that had stripped the hairs they'd placed in the potion of any dead or decaying organic matter before rejuvenating the remains and being consumed in the potion's state change activation. The magically enhanced reaction meant that, when the colour of the potion changed, the potion was exclusively infused with _living tissue_.

Polyjuice, when fuelled with living tissue, turned out to have interesting properties. For one, any wizard morphing into a human being would now sustain the change on the genetic level for _five straight hours_. With the change in how the polyjuice potion worked, it turned out that muggles could sustain the change for an entire _day_. Magic, rather than helping the change along as with normal polyjuice, was actively hindering the change.

Which, in the case of Potter and Granger, turned out to be a blessing in disguise. They'd somehow confused human hair with cat fur, namely cat fur from _two different cats_. And given that they were smart enough to brew polyjuice undetected, he knew they were smart enough to not try out polyjuice with hair from a different species. Prior to the terrible twosome, the last person to try that idea had ended up being squished by a steadily tightening exo-skeleton replacing his endo-skeleton, meaning that his bones were vanishing while his skin was steadily getting harder, smaller and tighter around his internal organs.

Needless to say, the potions master's guild issued a statement saying that they frowned upon their members trying polyjuice with animal parts. But they didn't stop the idiots from writing themselves off, since this was supposed to happen before graduation anyway. Very Darwinian, these potions masters. Come to think of it, one of Darwin's more rabid supporters _had_ designed the potions master's research schedule. What a coincidence.

But _their_ Polyjuice, now infused with one hundred percent living tissue, did not kill them. Rather, those two magnificently brilliant dunderheads had managed to brew a polyjuice potion that allowed them to make a partial interspecies transformation before their magic interfered. This showed that not only was the change possible, it was also shown to be permanent as their magic had twiddled with their genetic map while they were unconscious, in an effort to integrate as many of the new changes into the original physiology as possible.

By doing _that_, their magic had locked the two into those changes since, without the original genetic template to fall back on, the only change between their polyjuiced selves and their new selves was that the polyjuiced variety had more liquid in their system.

It also had kept them alive, given that their internal organs had been on the verge of feeding the wrong chemicals to their muscles and nervous system. Some of the things those two had narrowly avoided experiencing still made Snape shudder in horror.

And now Snape had to deal with two teenage feline chimaera since it was, in the words of one Albus Dumbledore, 'his responsibility to ensure the integrity of the potions stores'. When he'd asked just what that entailed, all he'd gotten back was a deadpan 'everything'. Presently, one Severus Snape had the magical custody of his best friend's offspring and that of yet another genius-level muggleborn witch to arrange.

He was practically told to coddle them. Potions masters didn't do coddling for students. It detracted from the point of teaching potions, which was to instruct by letting them find out just how wrong things could go should they screw up. Sure, it made for few graduates in potions class, but boy were those graduates good. Lesson one was that, inevitably, nerves of steel melted. Emotional control was far more attractive a long-term option. Being able to panic without making the terminal mistake of allowing your hands to shake was a more useful skill than appearing calm and collected whilst your involuntarily shivering hands turned a burn salve paste into magical napalm.

There, just one of the things you can't teach by coddling. Then again, they weren't alchemists. Potions instructors were known to give the occasional praise should a promising pupil show talent. Alchemists just tended to throw their most promising students farther into the deep end the more promise they showed.

The last graduates of the Alchemical Academy had been Nicholas and Perrenelle Flamel. They had earned their immortality the hard way, namely by skirting death every day during a 50-year apprenticeship to an unnamed mystery wizard who talking backwards cryptically, enjoy he did.

And the last student to even come close to mastering Alchemy had been one Albus Dumbledore, who had had his studies interrupted when his former lover started world war 2. Only to be told upon winning that he would have to start from the beginning if he wanted to continue.

Severus, knowing Albus had, of course, not been at all surprised when he found out just what kind of upbringing Dumbledore had cooked up for the child he considered the grandson he never had.

It was a testament to the boy's incredible tenacity that he had even made it to the Great Hall feast his first year, knowing what Severus knew about one Petunia Evans and family. Now Harry and his best friend had kicked every single Death Eater in the ideological pinatas by becoming the first members of a new magical species.

And if he remembered what his old 'colleagues' were like to magical creatures, light-sided blood traitors and genius-level mudbloods, then he was in for yet another couple of years of school-induced headaches and behind-the-scenes protection. At least Harry would find that the resistance training Albus had turned Harry's childhood years into would come in handy. Well, at least this time he had the authority to spread the pain.

"And then she went 'Harry! What happened to you?'" Flitwick fell to the ground, obviously in stitches over Minerva's dead-on impression of a panicking Hermione. Every time her precious cubs got into trouble, the aftermath was an inevitably humorous recounting of the more light-hearted aspects of the adventure of the week.

"Upon which Harry answered 'Hermione! That potion turned us into bloody cats!'" Pomona was having a real hard time keeping a straight face now. Strange, he'd always pegged the 'Puff matriarch as being rather stoic and neutral when it came to Gryffindor's antics. Things must be going very badly for Harry in the house of the badger if she was willing to crack a smile at his misfortune. Then again, it could be because Minerva's impression of Harry had more in common with the accent of a welsh dockyards worker than it had with the boy-who-lived. " And then she says 'Honestly Harry, I can see that for myself! Where's Ron?' to which he answered 'Do you think he turned into a cat too? Maybe he's found out who the heir of Slytherin is by now if he went full kitty on us!'"

Septima Vector finally collapsed in a fit of giggles "Full kitty! Merlin!"

Snape had heard enough. "If you are all _quite _done interrupting this meeting with your inane prattle..." Ah, glares, how I missed thee. "We still have to discuss what to do about the two founding members of the newest magical species to grace Britain's shores."

Dumbledore harrumphed and leaned back in his chair, levity forgotten for the moment as he pondered what his potions master was implying. "Yes, you are indeed correct Severus. Neither Harry nor Hermione enjoy any form of legal protection normally afforded to wizards and witches now that they are part of an unknown genus of magical creature." He could sense the change in atmosphere around the room. What the headmaster had just said was extremely worrying to any member of the British Wizarding Community.

Given his new status, the boy who lived had just destroyed any chances the Potter family had of remaining an ancient and noble House. The best he could hope for was having the Potter family remain an ancient House, as was the practice when the head of house was 'ensnared' into marrying a Veela. The House would then be classified as a Magical Creature sanctuary, with half of its assets 'reinvested' into the Wizengamot member's coffers and its members refused a seat for five generations. Or they could do what the Zabinis had done after World War One and move the traditional House Seat to a sympathetic country until they could reclaim their status as an Ancient and Noble House.

Come to think of it, Dumbledore was probably already having the necessary paperwork processed through the ICW and Gringotts, so no worries there. But moving Harry Potter to another school would be a completely different can of maggots. For one thing, such a move would kill Albus Dumbledore's political career dead in the water. For another, it would definitely blow this year's little crisis all over the front pages of every publication in the wizarding world. As if petrification wasn't enough, now they had wizarding children changing _species_! So they had to grin and bear it for now, hoping against hope that Harry would survive the year and manage to get his arse over to a friendly country before some bright spark in the pureblooded community realised that their national 'Hero' now had less inherent rights than your average Muggle.

The only thing that could save both Harry and Hermione from a gruesome fate right now was gaining magical citizenship in a different country where they still qualified as Human enough to enjoy basic Human rights. The closest country, and probably the best, was France. They had a massive Creature population, courtesy of one Napoleon Bonaparte, still revered by the French Magical Community as the muggle that saved their hides from the English and the Germans. He'd realised just how useful magical creatures were when he'd 'been allowed to visit' (read: invaded) a magical enclave in Corsica and was almost killed by a tribe of neolithic vampires. Equal rights to all had been inscribed in the constitution of magical France as a consequence, but it had only started being enforced when Napoleon threatened to raid the wizard's mansions and execute any magical nobles he came across.

This was, of course, after he'd demonstrated just how good his guns were by training them on the French 'ministere des citoyens de la republique francaise aux pouvoirs surnaturels' (the ministry of supernatural power holding citizens of the French republic, as it was then called) and pulverising the formidable fortress within minutes.

"Albus, Minerva, I will need your help in this. First, we need to contact the Grangers as soon as possible to inform them of this. Second, both Harry Potter and Hermione Granger need to leave for France during the Easter break. I can arrange neither of these things anytime soon, since I need to finish preparing for when school starts in two days' time. Finally, I will require full magical custody be turned over to me before the month is out."

Minerva looked at him curiously. "Custody, Severus? Whatever for?"

"Because once the wizarding public finds out about this, they will also go digging through the archives looking for someone to blame. It is very likely indeed that they will find that Albus has magical guardianship and custodial rights over every muggleborn magical child... and Harry Potter. The only reason I am not asking for the change to be sooner is because Albus is applying for French Magical citizenship on their behalf _right now_, has still got to transfer the Potter Family Seat over to their estate in France before Fudge catches on and is the only one of the Wizengamot with enough influence to sufficiently delay Lucius Malfoy's attempts at enslaving your beloved Cubs, Minerva."

He hated causing the woman pain, but he had to drive the message across right now. "They won't look twice at me when it comes to figuring out who their magical guardian and custodian is. After all, even Albus would not be so stupid as to give custody of the Boy-Who-Lived and a muggleborn witch over to one of Voldemort's Death Eaters. And the longer they waste time attacking Albus, the more time the terrible twosome will have to get out from under the ministry's inevitable trap."

All heads in the room nodded at his logic, though they also fully understood the underlying message; they, too, will be attacked once the truth outs, just in case they were the ones Dumbledore entrusted with the well-being of the two teens.

Flitwick looked particularly ill, having had experience with just how far some parties would go to subjugate half-breeds and sentient beings they see as a threat. House elves were just one species that the wizards had captured and tamed. Goblins still talked about the day that European wizards had robbed western European dragonkind of the higher mental faculties they were so prized for in the east. Centaurs had actually had a civilisation at one time, collaborating with the druids to create intricately designed organic cities in the middle of massive forests. The Romans had not been amused.

The only ones untainted by the hand of wizard-kind were the Dark Creatures, monsters too powerful, cunning, aggressive and dangerous to let anything even remotely human come near them. Phoenixes would downright refuse to go anywhere near Europe under normal circumstances, the original pain of magical lobotomy and enslavement still resonating across their little corner of space/time like a funeral dirge. The legacy of shame the early European wizards had left their descendants to deal with was one reason why the only interaction wizards allowed themselves with sentient magical creatures was passive at best. The temptation to take what was not rightfully theirs was a strong one, and one that Dark wizards were especially adept at following. And what Severus was proposing would be tantamount to suicide, should he be alive to endure the wrath the next pureblooded Dark Lord would bestow upon him for betraying the ideals and principles underlying the Dark Mark like he had. Should he be found out. But then again, the lengths he'd gone to to protect Lily Evans, shades of whose character existed in both Harry and Hermione, had ascended to the status of legend amongst the inner circle of the order of the Phoenix.

He'd become a Potions Master in order to garner the influence necessary to keep her alive for a little while longer. He'd appeared right in the middle of an Order of the Phoenix meeting, dressed in his Death Eater uniform with mask and all, his hands high in the air and telling them _exactly _how he'd bypassed the Fidelius wards, in order to inform Dumbledore about what Voldemort knew regarding the prophecy. He had voluntarily lowered his chances of survival to that of a snowball dropped into Hades. He had killed hundreds of others in his effort to ascend to the inner circle. All so that he could keep Lily alive for a little while longer. He was, by no means, a nice man, or even a good one. Expedience trumped morality every time, no exceptions. He was hard. He was evil. In short, he was _perfect._ And his colleagues knew it.

Dumbledore nodded, eyes twinkling at him. Oh how he hated twinkling eyes. "So be it, professor Snape. On my authority as Chief Warlock, Severus Andronicus Snape, Potions Master and Professor at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry, is hereby awarded custody of Hogwarts students Harry James Potter and Hermione Jane Granger, transfer to be carried out on february the first of this year. So mote it be." A bright flash filled the room, and Snape's blank look slowly changed into a smile. "Impressive. And there I was, thinking that you would bury me under a ton of paperwork before handing the brats over to me. How... considerate of you."

The old man chuckled into his beard "One tries, one tries."

"And a happy new year to you too, you old coot" he said, pouring himself a generous shot of the firewhiskey Albus broke out for their new year's staff meetings. Teachers never had much of a life, but looking at the proud and hopeful faces of the people he'd known for two thirds of his short and miserable existence, thinking that herein was the key to a better existence for Harry and, perhaps, a change in Magical Britain, he couldn't help but sigh sadly. _Hope is a powerful thing. So is self-delusion. I wonder which variety they are experiencing. Which one I am experiencing._

Meanwhile, in an infirmary in another part of the castle, Harry Potter was discovering that You-know-who was not his worst nightmare, not by far. No, rather it was watching his best friend bawl her eyes out as he held her in a loose hug that did it for him.

He was used to himself feeling alone in the world, powerless to stop an innocent action from becoming a disastrous mistake. He was used to the sheer terror of being different, a _freak_, in the eyes of those that were supposed to care and be nice to you. He was slowly becoming used to the fact that, no matter what else happened, his life would never be either easy or simple. That he would meet people that either absolutely loved him or did their level best to kill him. That Bad Things happened to him and those around him.

Watching Hermione's face after being told that she was no longer really human, that she would shortly be learning all the little, painful things he'd grown up with, broke his heart. Ron's reaction of utter horror and tries at reassuring the two of them spoke louder about how bad the future was probably going to be for them than the thousand ministrations they endured under Poppy's care. He knew what Hermione was thinking. He knew what she'd gone through. What she would be going through shortly. He'd been there for years, and therefore knew that he could do nothing to make it better. He'd found his worst nightmare, and there was nothing he could do but let her ride it out.

"Shh, shh. I'll always be there for you, okay Hermione? It's you and me, okay? We've been through worse, and probably will go through worse again. But i'll never leave you. You're not alone, Hermione. No matter what." Her head nodding in acknowledgement was the only signal he got that she'd listened. He could still smell the fear wafting up to him, a fear so deep he would have termed it existential had he known what it meant. Being a freak, an outcast, alone, he'd been there. He would never let her go through the same. And so Harry Potter unwittingly swore a binding magical oath that tied his best friend to the very protections he enjoyed and prophecies he was subjected to. This would be a move that, over time, he would come to praise and curse in more or less equal measure. But for now, he enjoyed the faint glow pervading them both, banishing the darkness and the nightmares they inevitably brought with them for the time being, while he slowly felt himself drift off to sleep, his best friend cradled up against him. He whispered to her:

"Happy new year, Hermione. It's definitely going to be interesting." And then he gave himself over to Oblivion.

_And there we have it, folks. Chapter 2, setting the scene for future action. No, this is not a soul bond fic. It's more like a probability bond. Their souls are not tied together, it's more like their destinies are. This means they are not magically married. No point-to-point telepathy, knowing the other's emotions, seeing the other's memories or any of that bull. Just two very good friends who will continuously be thrust into traumatising situations together. Hell, even if soul bonds did exist, ponder this; Harry has a Horcrux in his head. Technically, he's _already_ soul bonded to Voldemort, even going so far as to share hereditary magics with him. Ponder that for a moment. Ewww, right? So they fall in love the old-fashioned way, albeit a lot quicker thanks to Harry's little oath._

_Just wanted to clarify that point. I have no idea just how far I will go before driving canon off a cliff for good. My instincts say fourth year, but my brain tells me that Pettigrew will be dealt with a lot quicker than in canon should the two spend their time in Hogwarts. And we can't just have all the action in September now, can we?_

_Say, what about having an early start to the Horcrux Hunt, with Severus, Sirius and Tonks subbing for the Golden Trio while Remus subs for Neville Longbottom? The golden trio are on the run from the ministry, thanks to some nifty legal viciousness by the Brits, while the French ministry tries their level best to retrieve the two Cubs and get them to safety before it's too late. Problem: the auror uniform is a standard ICW issue, meaning that they all look the same. So it's up to the trio to catch Pettigrew before it's too late and get him to France before the MOM gets their hands on all of them. _


	3. A FUBAR Breakfast

Chapter 3: The reveal

A/N_: Just a short addition here, setting up some future stuff and tossing in some ideas on how the two will still have a relatively normal Hogwarts experience despite being turned into, well, cats._

**Disclaimer: Not mine. Don't want it. This fic isn't dead. I blame the strange aeons we live in.**

* * *

Breakfast on january the second was traditionally a low-key affair at Hogwarts. Far from the pomp & glamour of Christmas Eve and even the subdued party atmosphere only a night of debauchery being supervised by people old enough to have taught your grandparents a thing or two can afford, breakfast on that day was often a solemn occasion at Hogwarts. It was the day where those legally of age came to grips with their first hangover and their inebriated self's choice in bed partners, where the staff managed to have one breakfast that was so peaceful and quiet they could believe that it was a vacation period and where the younger students were too stressed out by having to prepare for the coming semester to even think about making noise.

"RONALD BILLIUS WEASLEY!"

Leave it to Molly to ruin the occasion.

"HOW DARE YOU TAKE POLYJUICE POTION! DON'T YOU REALISE HOW DANGEROUS THAT IS? IF I EVER FIND OUT THAT IT WAS YOU WHO THOUGHT OF THIS, I WILL TEAR YOUR NADGERS OFF YOUNG MAN, I-"

Sprout, deciding to indulge herself a bit, turned to a rapidly paling Lockhart, feigning confusion at some of the swearwords being launched at the small redhead. "Gilderoy, what are nadgers?" The spluttering defence professor completely missed the sly snickers his stuttering covered up.

"Pay up Filius." Minerva said, holding her hand out and making 'come hither' gestures to her height-challenged neighbour. "I always knew Molly would figure it out by herself. She was a smart one back in the day."

"Huh. If only she'd put as much of her brain to work during charms class as she does keeping track of her offspring, I would not have taken up that bet Minnie." Flitwick grumbled as he charmed the requisite coinage to float over to his colleague.

"Indeed. She must be a genius if she can keep track of all of her offspring, given how, ah, _bountiful _she turned out to be." Severus remarked, fairly dripping smugness said as Sprout handed over her coins after the fifth utterance of the word 'disgrace'. "Though she could crack open a dictionary from time to time. Her vocabulary seems rather... limited for such an intelligent woman."

"Now that's enough of that my dear Severus! Surely, that's not how you should refer to one of my loyal fans!" Albus, obviously fascinated with how well his former pupil had mastered the Howler-specific memory expansion charm, managed to snap out of his trance and stare at the sparkling buffoon in disbelief. Maybe he _should_ have made a different bet with the twins this year after all.

"Well well, a fan you say? I guess that solves the mystery surrounding her vocabulary, or lack thereof, then." Snape said, smiling at the stupid, stupid man sitting as far away from him as was physically possible. Minerva and Filius scoffed, Pomona giggled before blushing at her own behaviour and Albus's twinkle doubled. _Guess that's five points to me, then. Better yet, five points to Slytherin for teaching the fundamentals behind well-reasoned and intelligent rebukes._ The distant _pling_ of points being added to the Slytherin tally attracted McGonnagall's glare.

"Severus..." the grand duchess of intimidation-land growled at him.

"What? I didn't say it out loud, Minerva. And if I didn't say it out loud, yet the points are still added, that means that-"

"Hogwarts agrees." Came the monotone drone from everyone other than Snape and Dumbledore making the head of Slytherin smirk in satisfaction. At least, until a muffled _plink_ was heard coming from the three other hourglasses, once again evening the score. "Oh, it's _on_."

"Children, children, please." Albus's soothing yet irritating voice calmed all the participants in the brewing points fight. "It seems Mister Weasley's well-deserved Howler has just burst into smoke. Just in time as well, I believe..."

* * *

The doors to the Great Hall groaned open once more, barely registering amongst most of the student body other than those nursing their Worst Headache Ever. Though the two... people that stepped through them did manage to attract their attention.

Hermione looked practically the same. Bright-eyed, bushy-haired, wearing her traditional frumpled uniform and a cardigan she was known to treasure during those cold winter days esconced in the library. Maybe a bit taller, but it's not like anyone outside of a very narrow and specific circle of friends would curry onto that fact. The one accompanying her, however, was somewhat different.

He looked, for all intents and purposes, like a cat on two legs. The lithe and oddly graceful body was covered in a dark-coloured coat of messy, striped fur. The hands, though still recognisably human, no longer had fingernails but instead sported slits through which, if one looked carefully, one could see a hint of ebony-coloured claw poking out. The head, though sporting human features, had unnaturally high and pronounced cheekbones that tapered off into a square jaw. Green eyes peered around the Hall, the vertical eyeslits with a pitch black centre taking in every detail with a tired-looking leer. Then the thing yawned, revealing a set of razor-sharp, pointed teeth that made some of the hufflepuffs present recoil in fear at this strange, unnatural beast wearing a boy's Hogwarts uniform with Gryffindor tie. The inside of the hand was covered in a dark, leathery skin reminiscent of a keepers' glove, sticking out like padding in the palm area. Oddly enough, the nose, though covered in fur, was still recognisably human.

"Holy shit, I didn't know elves had fur." A hung over Ravenclaw muttered in the dead silence, causing Hermione to jump in surprise.

Turning to her monstrous companion, she facepalmed and tugged on his arm. Turning ever so slightly to catch his attention, she inadvertently showed something that made the already slack-jawed crowd goggle in surprise. Young miss Granger _had a tail_ _sticking out of the back of her skirt_. A number of boys, and an astonishing number of girls, drooled openly at the sight.

"Harry." she said in a level tone, pulling on the half-awake teen's sleeve. "Harry... HARRY!"

"Huh? What? Hermione? What is it?" the moody apex predator asked her.

"You forgot your glamour." The _again_ was left unsaid, though she was sure that this would become an issue later.

"Oh what-Oh! Ah-heheh sorry, completely forgot." he said, tapping his uniform's Hogwarts emblem with a vicious-looking claw. All of a sudden, rather than a man-sized murder machine, there stood ickle Harrikins, suspected heir of Slytherin and all-round goofball. With a tail wagging along behind him. And standing at roughly six foot one. Not so ickle anymore, then. "Uh, hi guys, uh..." the crowd listened in rapt attention. "Potions accident."

And then there was chaos.

* * *

"I can't believe you!"

Harry looked up from morosely poking away at his bacon. "Huh, what? Hermione, did you just say something?" the girl in front of him, though just as tired as he was, managed to shake her head whilst maintaining that mask of alertness he envied with a passion during Binns's classes. He looked around, hoping against hope that he would not only spot the person doing the speaking, but maybe even the smoked salmon that sometimes appeared for breakfast. Hmm. Smoked Salmon. And Cream. Yes...

"Up here, you fluffy-eared moron!" Still looking around wildly, Harry completely failed to act upon the 'up' part of the statement and crane his neck back a smidge. "Oh, for crying out loud..." All of a sudden, Harry felt a weight sitting on his right shoulder, digging her claws _deep_ into his sleep-addled flesh. He yowled.

"AHHH! WHAT WAS THAT FOR?" he exclaimed, turning his head to glower at his less-than-impressed familiar.

"I leave you alone for _five _minutes, count them, _five_ and you go and turn into a bloody cat." The owl huffed at him. "Well, _excuuuse me _for being a bit miffed at that, thank you oh so very much!"

"Oi! It's not like I set out for this to happen, you know!"

"Yes, I am _sure_ that you are _completely_ innocent of all wrong-doing, fool."

"Hey!" He whined, his long, pointy ears flattening against his skull in a show of petulance. "You know I am."

"Oh, sure you are, you preeeck!" His familiar screeched at him, taking off to go and hunt for shadow voles while she calmed down. Harry just sighed, turning back to poking at his bacon and wishing that it was a bit fresher. As in that it squealed when he managed to catch it and tear its throat out fresher. Wait. Eww...

"She... talks." Harry turned towards Hermione, looking at her stunned face in confusion.

"Well, of course she does. We talk all the time."

"No, I mean... she talked. In English."

"Yeeess, I would have a hard time understanding her otherwise."

"She is an Owl."

"That she is." Harry nodded sagely at that. Hedwig was most definitely not a raven or even one of those weird bat-winged teddy bears he'd seen in Diagon Alley over the summer break. Nope, definitely not. She was way cooler. Than BatBears, at least.

"But she could talk. I heard her. An Owl. Talk in English."

"Really? That's so cool! You hear her talking too?"

"Yes..." the stunned girl answered her dense companion. "Wait, you mean she's done this before?"

"Yes, she does. In fact, over the summer break, she never shut up. She kept nagging me about everything, my diet, my relatives, my homework, my sanitary habits... It's soo annoying sometimes, but I know she means well." he cracked a smile at his friend's look of Ron-level confusion. "You'll get used to it."

"I.. doubt that somehow. Do you think this has anything to do with our... accident?"

"Probably." the teen blithely replied as he gave up and asked one of the prefects to summon him some salmon ASAP. "I'm sure we'll find out soon enough."

Ron just shook his head at his two friends' antics. "Hedwig? Speaking English? You two are bonkers."

"I heard that, you red-headed son of a monkey!" a distant voice shouted back. Ron just kept on eating, oblivious to the amount of pain he was going to be in for when the white-feathered fury came back.

* * *

"My Lord." The diminutive figure bowed, his uniform positively sparkling in the gloomy lighting provided by the torches lining the walls of the parlour.

"What is it? Can't you see I'm busy?" The 'Lord' snarled, not happy at having his studies interrupted so carelessly. The opened tome fluttered in the wake of some unknown breeze, making the shadows given off by the fires dance and writhe in some grotesque choreography of their own making.

"I bring news, my Lord, from our artifacts at Hogwarts."

"Ah. And what of it?" He waved at the diminutive figure, indicating that the wretched thing may rise and present itself in the way an intelligent being should, namely upright and not drooling all over the carpet.

"It seems that new entities now roam the halls of Hogwarts, milord. They are making our artifacts nervous."

"Are they now?" The Lord of all, King of the Goblins and Defender of the Burrows of England smiled at the idea. "A new species, huh? Good to know. Now leave me, I have work to do."

The servant scurried away, too frightened of being in the King's presence to dare linger within earshot. The Goblin smiled a toothy grin. It had been a long time since he'd been allowed to execute a wizard for creating a chimaera. Maybe he would pay Hogwarts a visit soon.

* * *

A/N: _the short version of this is that talking to some other animal species is something cat people can do. If you're asking why, it's because I find the idea to be a funny and interesting one. And because I can, but that goes without saying. As for the artifacts being involved, I believe that the Goblin process of artifact creation & enchantment creates __sapient__ magical artifacts, which is why the Goblins always rent, but never sell. _

_Being intelligent beings in their own right, the artifacts have extensive rights under Goblin law, one of which is the right to not be sold into slavery. Hence, rental agreements... and quite the spy network to boot. No, the wizards haven't figured that bit out yet._


End file.
